With increasing competition for water across sectors and regions, the river basin has been recognized as the appropriate unit of analysis for addressing the challenges of water resources management. Modeling at this scale can provide essential information for policymakers in their resource allocation decisions. A river basin system is made up of water source components, instream and off-stream demand components, and intermediate (treatment and recycling) components.

The Asian financial crisis led to a major devaluation of the Indonesian exchange rate, macro instability, and the need for a “structural adjustment” program. The real devaluation affects prices throughout the economy and has a major impact on growth, production, deforestation, and income distribution in the Sumatera region. This paper uses computable general equilibrium (CGE) models —a national model and a regional model of Sumatera— that focus on agriculture to explore the impact of a real devaluation on the economy of Sumatera.

This paper documents a Rwanda Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for the year 2011. The national SAM is based on newly estimated supply-use tables, national accounts, state budgets, and balance of payments. The SAM reconciles these data using cross-entropy estimation techniques. The final SAM is a detailed representation of Rwanda's economy. It separates 54 activities and commodities; labor by different sectoral types; and households by rural/urban areas as well expenditure quintiles. Labor and household information is drawn from the most recent Rwanda Living Expenditure Survey.

In recent years, microfinance institutions are seen as beacons of hope to help eradicate poverty through, among others, providing credit to poor rural households. Availability of small but repeated loans is, in the long-term, expected to impact on poverty. However, decades after the introduction of microfinance institutions into many rural areas, there are still questions as to what extent such long-term benefits are realized.

The purpose of this paper is to understand to what extent such a strategy is appropriate for the low income rice-based countries of the Indochina-Myanmar Region1 (IMR). On the one hand, the arguments in favor of agricultural diversification and agrofood based rural industrialization seem even more pressing than for the lower-middle income countries of Southeast Asia.

This paper seeks to understand how market imperfections affect the behavior of consumers in China's rural economy. A theoretical and empirical model is developed and estimated using a household-level data from six counties in Hebei Province. The results show that market development plays an important role in explaining food consumption behavior in China. As the market develops, farmers demand less grain and vegetables and consume more meat, fruit, and other food products after control for income and price effects.

Latin America and the Caribbean are relatively well endowed with water resources. However, population growth and rapid urbanization are putting considerable pressure on water available for irrigation. Local and regional water scarcity problems are exacerbated by severe water quality problems; and wastewater is frequently used for irrigation. Moreover, prospects for new investments into irrigation development appear limited.

"This paper highlights the difference between secure investor property rights and loosely defined individual property rights. Globalization and fiscal decentralization have intensified this difference.

This paper has been prepared as part of the Zambia country study of the Macroeconomic and Regional Integration in Southern Africa (MERRISA) project and serves as a background paper for modeling exercises. The paper focuses on analyzing institutional constraints on the development of the agricultural sector in Zambia. It argues that by changing some of the rules and neglecting to integrate these changes into the complete institutional setting, policymakers have been unable to achieve their goals. Other constraints on Zambia's agricultural development are of a more technical nature.

Recently scientists have started to examine how land-uses and land-use technologies can help mitigate carbon emissions. The half million small-scale farmers inhabiting the Amazon frontier sequester large stocks of carbon in their forests and other land uses that they might be persuaded to maintain or even increase through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol.

The paper revisits seasonality by assessing how the quantity and quality of diets vary across agricultural seasons in rural and
urban Ethiopia. Using unique nationally representative household level data for each month over one calendar year, we document
seasonal fluctuations in household diets in terms of both the quantity of calories and the number of different food groups
consumed. Households in both rural and urban areas consume less calories in the lean season, but interestingly, due to

Developing countries allocate scarce government funds to investments in rural areas to achieve the twin goals of agricultural growth and poverty alleviation. Choices have to be made between different types of investments, especially infrastructure, human capital and agricultural research, and between different types of agricultural regions, e.g., irrigated and high- and low-potential rainfed areas. This paper develops an econometric approach and provides empirical evidence on the impact of government investments in rural India using district-level data.